Two stories that caught my eye in recent weeks, one about drones, one about mosquitoes. See what I did there? Aaanyway....
There was an article in the first week of July in The Paper Of Record about training military drone pilots, which seems like quite a misnomer: "operators" or "controllers" seem more to the point. Please correct me if I misunderstood, Col. K ( a recently-added fanatical reader and my advisor on all things military), but the droners who are killing insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and wherever else our peace-prize-winning Pres. is selectively having people killed are not actually in those countries. They're in Mitt Ronmey's Amercia, the good ol' SUA, as Stephen Colbert had it. Essentially they're commuters playing lethal video games. They might have a mission in Iraq in the morning, break for lunch, then "go" to Afghanistan or (shhh) Pakistan in the afternoon, then commute home to spend the evening in front of the TV or at a Little League baseball or soccer game. Landing the things sounds fairly difficult: the signal from the on-board computer camera (Skypeing with drones!) has to bounce off a satellite on its way to Cali or wherever the operator is, so there's a several second delay. Things don't happen in inhuman human real-time. That also makes it difficult to hit moving targets, as you might expect; one rebel leader said that, as soon as they hear a drone, they start moving around as quickly and erratically as possible. At least, like those bad guys in Westerns, we're makin' 'em dance.
"Researchers estimate that mosquitoes have been responsible for half the deaths in human history," according to an article in The New Yorker for July 9&16 of this year. That statement stunned me, but seems not implausible (how's that for straight-shootin' syntax?) when you think about it. The prime culprit is Aedes aegypti, which transmits malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and several types of encephalitis, among other things. That species is not native to the Americas; it most likely arrived on slave ships in the 17th century, which I find cosmically hilarious and maybe the best modern example of Dante's contrapasso.
So scientists, particularly from the British firm Oxitec, have been experimenting with genetically-altered mosquitoes, and have already released millions into the wild. They are implanting two genes into laboratory mosquitoes; one of them is just a marker to identify altered bugs. The other, though, is an instruction to manufacture a certain protein at a level far too high to maintain healthy new cells. Sounds sorta like cancer, no? They implant these things into creatures, breed them, kill all the females, since only females bite ("Only women bleed us"), and release the males into the world. The males die after mating (life span is 10 days) as do any eggs that may result from this mixed breeding. Pretty ingenious, huh? Except that, since the only way to differentiate between genders is by size--females are significantly larger, and how would you get their little legs apart, anyway--scientists estimate that, for every 3,000 males released into the wild, one female looking for blood goes out, too.
Now on the face of it, both of these things sound pretty good, right? I mean, if our military can kill whatever group we currently deem the enemy while being on a whole 'nother continent, that's great. They'll be out of harm's way, the bad guys get offed, we win. And mosquitoes undeniably cause untold human suffering (Google "dengue fever," for instance) and death, so why not get rid of them? It's pretty well-accepted by biologists that they're not at all an important part of the food chain, especially since, evolutionarily speaking, they just moved into our neighborhood yesterday.
Morally, though...? Is it really okay to kill another human from half a world away while risking nothing more than thumb sprains ourselves, regardless of how "evil" that person is? Who's gonna decide who's evil, anyway? We might generally agree here in the US of A that those Al Quaeda leaders oughta go, but how long before we target neighborhood drug dealers, or people with opposing political points of view? Bill O'reilly or Roger Ailes with drones to fly drones...!? And no human has been bitten yet by a Frankensquito; we have NO IDEA what the ramifications of such an occurrence would be. What if one of them bit a drone? Holy shit!
Ah, the perils of Mordant Science and Technology. But 'twas ever thus: at Los Alamos, for instance, there was some question among that group of genius physicists that splitting the atom would set off an uncontrollable chain reaction that would destroy the planet. A small chance, but a chance, nonetheless. Thank Shiva the weenies were overridden, 'cause that whole nuclear thing has worked out pretty damn well, doncha think?
No shows this week or next, I'm afraid; work this week, vaca at Chautauqua next week. But on Saturday, Aug. 11, from 7-11 in the PM the WOOL Block Party will be happening at the Waypoint Center in beautiful downtown Bellows Falls, VT. There'll be several bands, lots of food, and a cash bar tended by yours truly. I'd love to have you stop by, and it's for a very worthy cause: helping to keep WOOL FM on the air. Hope you can make it.
* It's from a Van song, sort of. Called "Enlightenment."
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Myopiate For The Masses
On March 25 I wrote a post ("Pander...") lamenting the fact that our grownups aren't grown and our leaders don't lead. Well, from the THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD department: miraculously, that's all changed. They heard this one lonely voice and all is well in the world. Hallefreakinlujah!
Naw, I'm just goofin' around. Not a fuckin' thing has changed, except maybe to get worse. Imagine that.
The climate has undeniably changed. In this country the first six months of this year were 4.5 degrees F. hotter than the 20th century average--the hottest ever recorded. Nearly 60% of the country is suffering drought conditions; some foods will likely become scarce and prices on many, many items will increase. The Week, in the July 20 issue, whence those facts came, had a great cartoon, from the Chattanooga Times Free Press of an ostrich, head buried firmly in the sand, "global warming denial" written on its neck, and its body looking like a cooked turkey just out of the oven, heat waves radiating from it.
The gun murder rate in the US is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
The unemployment rate creeps back toward 9%, homes still aren't selling, Europe teeters still on the edge of bankruptcy and financial chaos, student-loan debt is going to come crashing down on all of our heads like the housing bubble did. And what do we talk about in this election year? Birth certificates, tax returns, treatment of family pets.
Quick study that I am, it's finally dawning even on me: We don't want grownups or leaders. We don't want to focus on or even really look at the life-and death issues facing us, issues which are HERE NOW. We want HEROES: we want Superman to swoop in, or Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford to step up and do something dramatic and wonderful and instantaneous and just fix things, goddammit, so we can keep on with our normal, upwardly-mobile, progress-and-profit American lives, the way it's supposed to be, the way God planned it when he led white people to these shores. If the Hadron Collider is here, can Deus ex machina really be far behind?
Well, can it? Can it really be fair that we--us, you and me--have to pay some sort of price for the way we've lived? Us? C'mon.
So this week, on my radio show (I have a radio show, remember? Tuesday, noon till two on 100.1 FM, wool.fm on the webs) I'm gonna celebrate Superman, and heroes in general. Maybe they'll hear it and show up and do what they're meant to do. I'm'a go play golf.
"Are you out there, can you hear me...?"
Naw, I'm just goofin' around. Not a fuckin' thing has changed, except maybe to get worse. Imagine that.
The climate has undeniably changed. In this country the first six months of this year were 4.5 degrees F. hotter than the 20th century average--the hottest ever recorded. Nearly 60% of the country is suffering drought conditions; some foods will likely become scarce and prices on many, many items will increase. The Week, in the July 20 issue, whence those facts came, had a great cartoon, from the Chattanooga Times Free Press of an ostrich, head buried firmly in the sand, "global warming denial" written on its neck, and its body looking like a cooked turkey just out of the oven, heat waves radiating from it.
The gun murder rate in the US is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
The unemployment rate creeps back toward 9%, homes still aren't selling, Europe teeters still on the edge of bankruptcy and financial chaos, student-loan debt is going to come crashing down on all of our heads like the housing bubble did. And what do we talk about in this election year? Birth certificates, tax returns, treatment of family pets.
Quick study that I am, it's finally dawning even on me: We don't want grownups or leaders. We don't want to focus on or even really look at the life-and death issues facing us, issues which are HERE NOW. We want HEROES: we want Superman to swoop in, or Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford to step up and do something dramatic and wonderful and instantaneous and just fix things, goddammit, so we can keep on with our normal, upwardly-mobile, progress-and-profit American lives, the way it's supposed to be, the way God planned it when he led white people to these shores. If the Hadron Collider is here, can Deus ex machina really be far behind?
Well, can it? Can it really be fair that we--us, you and me--have to pay some sort of price for the way we've lived? Us? C'mon.
So this week, on my radio show (I have a radio show, remember? Tuesday, noon till two on 100.1 FM, wool.fm on the webs) I'm gonna celebrate Superman, and heroes in general. Maybe they'll hear it and show up and do what they're meant to do. I'm'a go play golf.
"Are you out there, can you hear me...?"
Monday, July 9, 2012
Big Tent, Little Tent, Intent: Portent?
Well, you might have to bear with me even more than usual on this one, kids. See, I've been reading an article in The New Yorker about this radioevangelist in Tupelo, Miss. by way of Wyoming by way of Stanford(!) by way of Oklahoma City, named Bryan Fischer. As you'd probably expect, he's to the right of Attila politically, and his primary crusade is against homosexuals. He has said, among a deluge of crazy things, that homosexuality was at the heart of Nazism. To wit(less): "Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Storm Troopers...(he) discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough" and that "homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine, and six million dead Jews." I tried Google to find a list of well-known evangelical homophobes who are later outed themselves, a la Ted Haggard, but what's out there for vicious, violent, sick, twisted videos and rhetoric from these men and their acolytes is too disturbing for me to explore, much less recount. It is truly shocking and sickening.
Sorry--I really am shaken by what I just saw and read. But anyway, I intended to talk about how much Saint Ronald of Reagan's "Big Tent" in the Republican Party has shrunk, if in fact it ever really was larger than it is now. That tent is all-inclusive so long as you're not gay, non-white, a member of a labor union, a proponent of contraception (in 2012, for chrissakes) or a woman's right to have some say in her reproductive (at the very least) destiny, a believer in climate change, a Judicial activist (Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy excepted, of course), a believer in evolution, one who believes we need to raise revenue as well as cut spending, low-income, etc., etc. ad nauseum. A very large segment of the Republican Party is attempting to turn the calendar back to 1958, to a world which didn't even really exist then.
Maybe they have "Big Tent" confused with "Red Tent," the place which, in many cultures back in the day when women were fully-recognized, actual people, was used to segregate women when they were thought to be at their most powerful, during menstruation or childbirth. "Because of the power a woman has during this time, it is best that, out of respect for her men and their medicinal trinkets and beliefs, she stay away from them." Now, again and still, it's because of her lack of power that she needs to stay away. At any rate, tents are places, it seems, of apartness, not inclusion. Is that really how we want to live? Perhaps the upcoming election will give us an answer, for better or for worse.
As usual, this is the long way 'round to the theme for this week's show (hey, it's not easy, connecting the disparate parts for those who only read and those who only listen; you're probably best off in the majority, those who do neither). Turns out I have zero songs about "tents," but lots, in this season, about circuses, which seems apropos to our current governance, and carnivals. So that's what'll happen tomorrow, noon till two on 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs. Hope you can join me (and join the station, for a nominal tax-deductible charge, if you like this stuff).
"They're selling postcards of the hanging/
They're painting the passports brown/
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors/
The circus is in town...."
Sorry--I really am shaken by what I just saw and read. But anyway, I intended to talk about how much Saint Ronald of Reagan's "Big Tent" in the Republican Party has shrunk, if in fact it ever really was larger than it is now. That tent is all-inclusive so long as you're not gay, non-white, a member of a labor union, a proponent of contraception (in 2012, for chrissakes) or a woman's right to have some say in her reproductive (at the very least) destiny, a believer in climate change, a Judicial activist (Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy excepted, of course), a believer in evolution, one who believes we need to raise revenue as well as cut spending, low-income, etc., etc. ad nauseum. A very large segment of the Republican Party is attempting to turn the calendar back to 1958, to a world which didn't even really exist then.
Maybe they have "Big Tent" confused with "Red Tent," the place which, in many cultures back in the day when women were fully-recognized, actual people, was used to segregate women when they were thought to be at their most powerful, during menstruation or childbirth. "Because of the power a woman has during this time, it is best that, out of respect for her men and their medicinal trinkets and beliefs, she stay away from them." Now, again and still, it's because of her lack of power that she needs to stay away. At any rate, tents are places, it seems, of apartness, not inclusion. Is that really how we want to live? Perhaps the upcoming election will give us an answer, for better or for worse.
As usual, this is the long way 'round to the theme for this week's show (hey, it's not easy, connecting the disparate parts for those who only read and those who only listen; you're probably best off in the majority, those who do neither). Turns out I have zero songs about "tents," but lots, in this season, about circuses, which seems apropos to our current governance, and carnivals. So that's what'll happen tomorrow, noon till two on 100.1 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs. Hope you can join me (and join the station, for a nominal tax-deductible charge, if you like this stuff).
"They're selling postcards of the hanging/
They're painting the passports brown/
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors/
The circus is in town...."
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Secular Prayer, Or Just Old-Fashioned Hypocrisy?
As you know, faithful readers that you are, I'm currently involved in this cabinet-installation project in a nascent palace on Lake Sunapee. Turns out that the house is being built for an Executive Vice-President of, of all things in this campaign season, the bane of many people's existence: BainCapital. Go figure. One response I got to that info in the last post came from an old college friend and frequently infrequent email correspondent. The gist of it was (and this is a total paraphrase) How do you reconcile your bleeding-heart viewpoint, so evident in your blog posts, with dropping everything to go build a house for someone whose values you apparently find so repulsive?
That's an excellent question and one that I wrestle with frequently in my work. I'm using lots of raw materials and energy, destroying trees and wild places, to create, frequently, unnecessary, ostentatious, and ostentatiously unnecessary dwellings, monuments to someone's unthinking greed. This place is such a classic example of what I was initially tempted to call American conspicuous consumption ( a term coined by Thorstein Veblen in 1899!), but it's hardly limited to Americans, as evidenced by the lavish palaces we're discovering that were built by various dictators we've recently killed. It seems a general human impulse--if we can, we do, for the most part.
The person who raised this issue is a devout Catholic; in fact she has written several books on the value and efficacy of prayer. One way I thought of to respond was to ask how one reconciles faith in and devotion to an institution so rife with scandal and its own excesses; clearly it's possible to get past some ugly stuff if one can perceive some value on the other side. In this instance, in my case, the short answer is ugly and prosaic: I do it to pay the bills and to provide for my family. I think that we all make choices and compromises every day, to varying degrees of personal psycho/moral comfort. Do I feel guilty? Am I guilty? You bet. "And I'll be guilty for the rest of my life...."
But what of the posts and liberalness-on-my-sleeve posture? There's a better response to the question, I think: I'm gonna call it "Secular Prayer." See, I've never really understood the concept of prayer, at least in the narrow way I approached it. If there were a god, and an all-powerful one, who chose to give some people terrible things to contend with, and then was swayed by their supplication or petition (which brings to mind Jim Morrison's shrieked "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer" in the spoken-word intro to "The Soft Parade") to change his mind and make those things better--WTF (as the kids say.)? That just strikes me as perverse and vain; why in the universe would we want to honor and pay obeisance to an entity who toyed with lives like that?
Recently, though, it has been explained to me, primarily by my son the religious scholar, that prayer frequently--and maybe most appropriately (my words, not his)-- serves as an end unto itself. The simple act and fact of praying is itself healing, even with no real expectation of Occult Result, and there have apparently been studies showing just that. Now, that certainly raises the possibility that those positive results were proof of Divine Intervention but, as Jake said, "Potato, potahto."
I think, upon some reflection and my friend's challenge, that my missives/diatribes function in just that way: I have no illusion that I'm going to change the world, that I, of all people in the history of the world, will find just the way to express a point of view that I believe in, such that suddenly all of the peoples of the world will rise as one and say "Oh, yeah, that's it. Why didn't anyone tell us this before?" Nope, plain and simple, it makes me feel better just to put it out there. It's Secular Prayer, an attempt to self-heal and to cope with all of the negative stuff I see going on all around me, while at the same time finding some sort of community. And if I don't live, or live up to, my espoused ideals? Guess I'm just another human, rolling around in the mud and the blood and the beer of my shortcomings, vowing to do better next time. As Walt Whitman was the inspiration for the title of my radio show and this blog, so let him speak again: "Do I contradict myself? Well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
So, of practical necessity, no show this week either. I hope like hell to be back next week, though.
And remember: "Guilt is magical...."
That's an excellent question and one that I wrestle with frequently in my work. I'm using lots of raw materials and energy, destroying trees and wild places, to create, frequently, unnecessary, ostentatious, and ostentatiously unnecessary dwellings, monuments to someone's unthinking greed. This place is such a classic example of what I was initially tempted to call American conspicuous consumption ( a term coined by Thorstein Veblen in 1899!), but it's hardly limited to Americans, as evidenced by the lavish palaces we're discovering that were built by various dictators we've recently killed. It seems a general human impulse--if we can, we do, for the most part.
The person who raised this issue is a devout Catholic; in fact she has written several books on the value and efficacy of prayer. One way I thought of to respond was to ask how one reconciles faith in and devotion to an institution so rife with scandal and its own excesses; clearly it's possible to get past some ugly stuff if one can perceive some value on the other side. In this instance, in my case, the short answer is ugly and prosaic: I do it to pay the bills and to provide for my family. I think that we all make choices and compromises every day, to varying degrees of personal psycho/moral comfort. Do I feel guilty? Am I guilty? You bet. "And I'll be guilty for the rest of my life...."
But what of the posts and liberalness-on-my-sleeve posture? There's a better response to the question, I think: I'm gonna call it "Secular Prayer." See, I've never really understood the concept of prayer, at least in the narrow way I approached it. If there were a god, and an all-powerful one, who chose to give some people terrible things to contend with, and then was swayed by their supplication or petition (which brings to mind Jim Morrison's shrieked "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer" in the spoken-word intro to "The Soft Parade") to change his mind and make those things better--WTF (as the kids say.)? That just strikes me as perverse and vain; why in the universe would we want to honor and pay obeisance to an entity who toyed with lives like that?
Recently, though, it has been explained to me, primarily by my son the religious scholar, that prayer frequently--and maybe most appropriately (my words, not his)-- serves as an end unto itself. The simple act and fact of praying is itself healing, even with no real expectation of Occult Result, and there have apparently been studies showing just that. Now, that certainly raises the possibility that those positive results were proof of Divine Intervention but, as Jake said, "Potato, potahto."
I think, upon some reflection and my friend's challenge, that my missives/diatribes function in just that way: I have no illusion that I'm going to change the world, that I, of all people in the history of the world, will find just the way to express a point of view that I believe in, such that suddenly all of the peoples of the world will rise as one and say "Oh, yeah, that's it. Why didn't anyone tell us this before?" Nope, plain and simple, it makes me feel better just to put it out there. It's Secular Prayer, an attempt to self-heal and to cope with all of the negative stuff I see going on all around me, while at the same time finding some sort of community. And if I don't live, or live up to, my espoused ideals? Guess I'm just another human, rolling around in the mud and the blood and the beer of my shortcomings, vowing to do better next time. As Walt Whitman was the inspiration for the title of my radio show and this blog, so let him speak again: "Do I contradict myself? Well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
So, of practical necessity, no show this week either. I hope like hell to be back next week, though.
And remember: "Guilt is magical...."
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